Species of the Month

This month’s species of the month is a useful tree that provides sweets in the spring, shade in the summer, aesthetic enjoyment in the fall, and many manufactured products. The sugar maple is an important part of the natural world as well as an ornamental plant in cities and towns. Within the next few weeks they’ll be changing from verdant green to an explosion of color.

Sugar maple in its summer finest (The Spruce)

Scientific name: Acer saccharum

Kingdom: Plantae (plants)

Class: Magnoliopsida (dicots)

Order: Sapindales (flowering plants)

Range: Eastern US and Canada

Habitat: Moderately wet forest, occasionally drier slopes

Lifespan: 500 years

Diet: Water and sunlight

Predators: Deer, moose, snowshoe hares, squirrels, porcupines, humans

Conservation Status: No special protection

Sugar maple leaves (USDA)

Other Information: Sugar maple is the only tree suitable for the production of maple syrup. Nine or ten gallons of tree sap boiled down yields about a gallon of maple syrup. Deer, moose, and snowshoe hares browse the maple, while porcupines eat the bark. Squirrels, including the flying variety, eat seeds and buds. Many different songbirds build nests in the branches, while woodpeckers will nest in cavities. Bees will visit the flowers for pollen, even though pollen is spread by the wind. Aside from syrup, humans use sugar maple for wood. Furniture, flooring, and bowling pins are among the many maple products on the market. Leaves change color in fall before dropping. Colors vary by region but can be red, orange, or yellow. Some trees will have any combination of those colors rather than turning to just one. Leaf peeping in New England is a major tourism draw. You may recognize the sugar maple from the Canadian flag. Sugar maple seeds are in the fruit, which you probably played with as a kid. It's the little helicopters or you can make a mustache out of it. Information this week is from USDA. 

Sugar maple fruit (USDA)

Fall colors on display (Bartlett Tree Experts)

Porcupine Love

I was driving past Northwest Trek, a wildlife park which also does extensive conservation work, and I suddenly wondered how on Earth porcupines mate. Their quills are barbed so as to injure any critter that tries to attack it, but doesn’t that seem like it would hinder mating?

So I did a little digging, and in addition to quills being a roadblock to mating, females are frigid for 364.5 days a year (365.5 in a leap year). However, when she is ready to go for 8-12 hours each year, she will signal the males with secretions, which is how it typically works in the animal world.

When it is time, the successful male may have to ward off challengers. To set the mood, the female curls her tail over her back and relaxes her skin, which flattens the quills and reduces risk of impalement. 

They will do this several times until the female tires of her mate, who will go in search of more females having that time of the year. The female will have a seven month gestation period, followed by four months of lactation. Then after a month, it’s time to start over again. In case you’re wondering, when baby porcupines are born their hair is soft and hasn’t hardened into quills yet. Childbirth is painful enough already.

Here's a Youtube video of how it happens.

This week’s facts courtesy of Live Science